She declared, again without evidence, that she never used her family tree to advance her career (despite being listed as a minority in a law school directory).

Ms. Warren, Democrat of MA and a former professor at Harvard Law School, listed herself as a member of a minority group in a law school directory but has not claimed to be a Native American since being elected to the Senate in 2012. And my daddy's parents were bitterly opposed to their relationship. "So, in 1932, when Mother was 19 and Daddy had just turned 20, they eloped", she added.

"Indigenous people have been telling the story of Pocahontas - the real Pocahontas - for four centuries", Ms. Warren said, adding, "And, for nearly as long, her story has been taken away by powerful people who twisted it to serve their own purposes".

Now, the difference in Warren's case is that the need for a rhetorical defanging was not based on otherpeople's religious or racial prejudice - but out of her own confusing claim to Native American heritage, her inability to prove that link and the perception that she tried to benefit professionally from it.

Sen. Warren is running for a second six-year term, and among the political chattering class, she is considered a potential presidential contender in 2020.

"The joke, I guess, is supposed to be on me", she went on. I want to especially apologize to the over 350,000 citizens of Cherokee Nation, Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians and the United Keetoowah Band.

Warren on Wednesday pledged to be an advocate for native people and to amplify their stories.

Warren, who was raised in Oklahoma, said her father's parents objected to her parents' marriage because her mother "was part Cherokee and part DE".

But my mother's family was part Native American. "Lecturing, raging, and grandstanding can work up your followers on the far left, but that is not the same as serving your constituents".

With all due respect Warren should shut the hell up until she provides actual documentation to substantiate her claim of having Native American blood.

On the campaign trail, and after he became president, Trump has continually called Warren, "Pocahontas".

Warren in her remarks also chastised federal lawmakers for letting "their Big Oil buddies pad their profits by encroaching on your land and fouling your rivers and streams", although she stopped short of pointing the finger at Republicans.

"We have a president who can't make it through a ceremony honoring Native American war heroes without reducing Native history, Native culture, Native people to the butt of a joke", Warren said. "Violence remains part of life today". The majority of violent crimes experienced by Native Americans are perpetrated by non-natives, and more than half - half - of native women have experienced sexual violence. "And I promise I will fight to help write a different story".